of friends departed
by the primrose path
Summary: It's been a long time since Lea cried. How ironic that it was in the very place where he had no emotion for over ten years. [ two-shot. / set post-3D. / rated T for minor language. ]
1. Lea

**A/N:**

**Disclaimer – I'm not part of the copyright/s that concerns Kingdom Hearts or any of its affiliates. I'm not making any monetary profit from writing this.**

**There has always been one certain thing introduced in 358/2 Days that's confused me, canonically speaking.**

* * *

Lea sat on a bed with his head bowed over a book, and he was crying. The tears trailed down his chin and dripped onto the worn, well-kept hardcover; he'd closed it, unable to keep reading.

It wasn't that the book had really contained any life-changing knowledge, secret lore revealed after centuries of not seeing the light. No, nothing like that.

But his friend was there.

The pages he'd turned felt alive; he could hear Isa's voice in his ears as if his friend was reading his notes, his little scribbles out loud right beside him. At that moment, Lea could've sworn that had he turned, Isa would've been bent over the same book at his desk, a mirage of the past writing down the entry as Lea read them now.

He carefully wiped his tears from the cover, leaving wet smears that were quickly blotted again with more tears. Thoughtlessly, he kept wiping.

Xemnas had given everyone journals at the beginning. Lea didn't understand then; he still didn't get it now, since Xemnas had promised to everyone that the journals would remain private, a promise that had never been broken throughout all those years as far as he knew, which was a lot. Even more strangely, no one else had ever broken into another's journal either, maybe out of fear of Xemnas' wrath. But no one was around anymore to care, much less Xemnas.

"Not that they could've cared," Lea muttered out loud, "since we were all Nobodies. Get as angry as you want, but everyone knew it was fake. No hearts, no feelings, not really."

Apathy had done everyone in, it occurred to Lea – except for himself, who'd really cared too much. The thought seemed so funny to Lea that he started laughing through his drying tears and for long enough that he eventually shoved the rest of it back down his throat so he could stop.

He decided that apathy hadn't done _everyone_ else in; Roxas had died, after all, with emotion, the only one out of the entire Organization to really have a heart. Axel had only been growing one.

Lea looked back down at Isa's – Saïx's – journal and wiped the cover clean once more before opening it again to the first page.

_My home is gone,_ the first entry read, _destroyed. The King had set off some chain of events with his experiments, unleashing a wave of what Xehanort calls 'Heartless' to devour the town and all of its occupants, including Lea and I. How we're still alive – we're not. Xehanort describes us as 'Nobodies', beings separate from our past selves that supposedly lack hearts and therefore don't really exist. I'm skeptical, but I certainly don't find myself feeling as emotional as I thought I'd be. It's worrying, to say the least. _There was no pause written in here, but Lea paused anyway, sensing it in his friend's words. _Although if Xehanort is right, I shouldn't be capable of worry. Is he wrong, or could I just be imagining my emotions? He was an apprentice of the King's. I'll have to consider this later._

_Lea is as carefree as always, of course, perhaps even more so; it's like he's embraced his lack of a heart much more willingly than I have. But I can tell that, if not truly worried, he is concerned about what the future holds. I confided in him my suspicions earlier today; how Xehanort seems intent on changing all of our names, how his story of what happened only furthers suspicion in my mind even if I haven't found any real holes yet. Lea's skeptical, of course. But we're also best friends; he trusts my instincts._

_There are a total of eight of us in this castle. Besides Lea, Xehanort, and I are the other apprentices of the King: Dilan, Aeleus, Even, Ienzo, and Braig. None of them seem as worried as me; in fact, they don't seem worried at all. Perhaps we really do lack emotion. I've noticed, however, that all but Braig and Dilan seem to avoid Xehanort whenever possible. I don't yet know why, but I plan on finding out._

_Despite all of this, there is one thing that truly troubles me, unrelated to Xehanort. No matter how hard I try, I can't remember the name of our home. It only summons a tip-of-the-tongue moment. It's two words, and the first begins with an 'R' and the second with a 'G', that much I can recall. But beyond that, nothing._

"Radiant Garden," Lea whispered. "Radiant Garden, Isa."

_I guess I have nothing else to write. I'll update with more news tomorrow. —Isa._

Lea touched Isa's signature with a finger, and he thought that he could almost see the pen drawing the curves of the three letters. He turned the next several pages with care, only touching upon each entry; he'd already read every one of them fully.

"Hey, Lea."

He looked up to see Sora standing in the doorway, and the young Keybearer glanced around the room before coming in.

"Whose room was – whoa, are you okay?"

Lea grimaced. Figured that the evidence of tears was still on his face. "I'm fine," he said curtly and pretended that Sora hadn't asked that, furtively swiping at his face. "This room was an old friend of mine's."

"An old friend?" Sora looked around with renewed curiosity. "Roxas?"

"No, not Roxas," Lea replied and suddenly felt old.

"Then who? I didn't know you had any other friends." Sora then winced, looking shamefaced. "I mean, not that you couldn't make any other friends, but—"

"Calm down, I get it," Lea interrupted, waving a hand. "Yeah, the rest of the Organization and I weren't exactly best buds. Literally the only reason we lived in the same castle was 'cause of Kingdom Hearts, if the endless pissing contests were anything to go by." He snorted at Sora's expression. "But when I first joined..." He looked back down at the journal, which was still open at the entry he'd had to stop at earlier – the one that talked about how Isa got his scar. "Yeah, I'd had a friend."

"Is he dead then?"

"No. Not literally, anyway. You probably know him as Saïx."

Sora's mouth fell open.

"You might want to close that," Lea said seriously. "I've never seen any flies in this castle before, but they could just be clever little buggers, waiting for their chance."

Sora closed his mouth, but he still looked shell-shocked. "You're friends with Saïx?"

"Was," Lea corrected softly. "And his name's Isa. Get it memorized."

"But he's... working for Xehanort now, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he is."

Sora frowned, looking away from Lea.

Lea sighed. "Sora," he asked, "Riku turned to the darkness once, right? What did it feel like, to know that he was on the wrong side?"

"Terrible," Sora replied, frowning more deeply. "He stopped trusting me because I wasn't trying to find Kairi, and he acted like he hated me. It was like... like he'd forgotten that we grew up together on the same island."

Lea nodded. "It was a bit different with me and Isa. We were still friends at first, even though we didn't have our hearts to actually like each other with." He looked off to the side. "A few years passed, and something happened. Isa never told me the truth about how he got his scar, or how his eyes changed color – I don't think even he knew, and he just lied his butt off to me – but he started changing. By the time Roxas showed up, he could've been the Nobody of a completely different person."

"... I just can't think of you and him as friends for some reason," Sora finally said. "Saïx always seemed such like a big hard-case. And whenever I talked to him, if he mentioned you, it was like he was talking about a cockroach or something."

"Sounds exactly like him," Lea said dryly.

"But you and him were really friends?"

"Yeah. Tough to imagine it now, but like I said, he changed. A long time ago, he was different." Lea chuckled. "Great, now I feel old. But anyway, Isa used to be a nice guy. I bet Riku and him would've gotten along pretty well."

Sora thought about this for a second and then plopped down into the desk chair. "Is that his then?" he asked, gesturing at the book in Lea's lap.

Lea blinked; he'd almost forgotten about it, and yet he'd absently begun fingering a page. "Oh. Yeah, it is. His journal."

"Huh. That explains the ones I saw in some of the other rooms."

"The other—" Lea abruptly stood.

Sora blinked at the expression on Lea's face. "What?"

"The other journals!" he shouted.

"Okay," Sora drew out slowly. "I think I'm lost."

"All of us had journals. Stars in hell, I can't believe I never thought of this before." Lea began to pace and gesture. "They all wrote in them. Personal thoughts and stuff because they were promised privacy, courtesy of Lord Xemnas himself. Heck, even _he_ had one. Some of them had definitely been careful anyway. But I bet there're still some nice bits of information we could dig out of them."

"More info about their plans," Sora mused, eyes wide as he understood. "That could help us a lot."

"Yeah." Lea glanced down at the journal in his hands – Isa's journal. He suddenly wanted to find Roxas'. He _had_ to find it. "Everyone's dead anyway. I'm sure they won't care if we... invade their privacy a little. Come on." He began to walk, still holding the journal in his hands.

Sora hurried after him.


	2. Sora

Sora went down a hall alone.

He'd split up from Lea after being pointed down this hall as one of the used residential areas. So far, he'd found Vexen's, Luxord's, and Marluxia's journals, and Sora was carrying them in his arms. The rooms had strangely been assigned out of order, maybe for this very reason.

Sora didn't find another room until he reached the very end of the hall, at the bottom of the last set of stairs. He shifted the journals until one of his hands was free to open the door, and he went inside.

The room's layout was simplistic and nearly identical to the others, with the same basic furniture of a desk and chair, bed, and nightstand. Bits of color, however, dotted the room, interrupting the monochromatic white. A glass bottle filled to the brim with white-gold sand sat on the desk, surrounded by a multitude of dried flower blossoms; some of them were familiar to Sora. A single sand dollar rested beside them, along with a ruddy starfish that reminded Sora of the ones he used to collect and preserve when he was younger.

He walked over to the bed, where dozens of small seashells littered the space beside the pillow. Sora set his journals down and picked up one of the larger whelks, brushing his fingers across the ridged, peach-colored shell.

Slowly, Sora felt his eyes well with tears.

He wiped them away before they could fall, knowing that they had nothing to do with him and everything to do with someone else. "Roxas," Sora whispered aloud. "Why are you sad?"

As if on instinct, Sora brought the shell up to his ear and closed his eyes. He had the distinct sense of déjà vu. Behind the distant roar of the sea, Sora thought he could hear a voice there for a moment, one that sounded so much like Kairi.

"You miss someone," Sora guessed quietly and opened his eyes.

He received no reply, except for a single tear that went down his face before he could stop it.

Sora set the whelk shell back down in its proper place and studied them all for a while. It was an impressive collection for someone who hadn't lived by the sea.

Eventually, he turned back around to the desk and searched it for the journal he knew was there. Finding it in a drawer, Sora opened to the first page and found it curiously empty – wait, no. There was writing there, but it was completely illegible, as if the letters had been scrambled and then worn away from age... even though he knew that shouldn't be possible with the pages still pristine.

The sounds of someone walking down the hall outside echoed into the room, and Sora quickly went to the door. "Lea," he called, sticking his head out. "You might want to check this out. Right now."


End file.
